God's Been Divorced Too: Breaking the Stigma of Divorce and Infidelity

By Wade Long

Divorce can make someone feel that their life can never be right again. Where is God? Could he possibly understand? Would he even want to lead me through this? And why has this happened to me?

 

God’s Been Divorced Too provides a Christian answer to those questions. The fact that God himself has been divorced is utilized to break the usually powerful stigma associated with divorce. God's personal divorce is also used to delve into the dynamics of infidelity, for the specific purpose of removing the disorientation that always seems to follow a betrayal.

 

A framework of “Seven Spiritual Secrets” is used to display timeless truths, to both understand the past and to build a new future. The seven secrets of freedom, peace, reciprocity, fallenness, integrity, trust, and fulfillment will take the reader on a specifically scriptural journey into restoration after divorce.

 

Along the way, each secret challenges some traditional viewpoints, while revealing unique and hidden outlooks. For example: Does God really hate divorce? Is unconditional love even scriptural? Is a perfect life even achievable? Are there boundaries to sacrificial love? Is it true that we can't trust anything in this world? And was marriage intended to be our highest fulfillment on earth? (If not, what is?)

 

Many people, from ancient times until today, have embraced the truth of these timeless secrets as they walked through the pathways of their lives. So come and join them! It's the scriptural journey of peace, restoration, and fulfillment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490857213

Wade Long

Wade Long has been an attorney, a solo real-estate broker with companies in two states, a divorce recovery director for three years at a larger church on the Gulf Coast, and then three years in a full-time pastorate. For the last year and a half, Wade has been writing this book.

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Copyright © 2014 Wade Long.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-5720-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5719-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5721-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014918850

WestBow Press rev. date: 02/03/2020

Contents

Acknowledgments

Scripture References

1.     The Secret of Freedom God’s Been Divorced, Too

The Paintball Game

God Has Been Divorced, Too

Touched by Our Infirmities

The Ancient Marriage of God

Uncommon Virtue

The Accolade of the Servant

2.     The Secret of Peace What Scripture Really Says

Peace on Earth

The Catharsis of Group Peace

A Curious Choice for the Broker of Peace

Good Faith

The Malachi Prophecy: Does God Really Hate Divorce?

My Peace, Your Peace

3.     The Secret of Reciprocity Marriage Is Not an Unconditional Love

Unconditional Love or Conditional Love…That Is the

Question

So, What’s the Problem with Marriage?

This Can’t Be What This Seems

The Way Out

Intrinsic Freedom

4.     The Secret of Fallenness The Myth of the Perfect Life

The Surprise of Imperfection

Does God Really Expect Us to Be Perfect?

Ah, Complete Perfection and the Moth

The Coming New World

5.     The Secret of Integrity Treasure in Earthen Vessels

Irrefutable Worth and the Devaluation of Love

Counterintuitive Love

The Hail Mary Pass

Image of God

Becoming the Children of God

6.     The Secret of Trust Am I All Alone?

The Fallacy of Changing a Heart

Treasures in the Heart

Predictable Hearts

Rubies and Pearls

Tagalong Heart

Broken Bones Purged with Hyssop

Father of the Heavenly Lights

Padlocked Relationships and Experimental Friendships–Trusting God Instead of Trusting His Gifts

Forgotten, As a Dead Man Out of Mind

Trust: The Circular Pathway

7.     The Secret of Fulfillment Marriage Is Not Your Earthly Fulfillment!

Caution: Bad-Things-at-Work-Zone

Fragrance in the Storms

But Is God Good?

God of This Age: How Does Lucifer Affect Our Fulfillment?

Lizards in the Air

Eternal Marriage

Never Give Up

Walking on Water

Ancient First Love

What Is Love?

Do Angels Marry?

Appendix: God’s Redemptive Plan for Our Salvation

Acknowledgments

Olivia Long Cassesi, cover concept

Michael Busmente, cover design

Eleuteria A. Wenceslao, interior design

Cover photograph by Vichly44/Thinkstock.com

George Keleny, monochrome white rose

Thinkstock by Getty Images from iStock collection, cover image

Alice Wonsowski, Wordworks Secretarial Services

Sandy Brown, polish edit

Terry Cestnik, proof edit

Scripture References

Scripture verses, unless otherwise noted, are from the King James Version KJV of the Bible.

Scripture quotations designated "NASB" are taken from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the Life Principles Bible. Copyright © 2005 by Charles F. Stanley. Holy Bible, New King James Version® (NKJV®), copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture verses marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture verses marked Phillips are taken from The New Testament in Modern English by J. B. Phillips. Copyright © 1962 by HarperCollins. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked RSV CE are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, Catholic Edition, copyrighted 1993 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations, or interlinear literal renderings marked Marshall are from The Interlinear KJV-NIV Parallel New Testament in Greek and English by Alfred Marshall. Copyright © 1975 by The Zondervan Bible Publishers.

References marked Strong’s are from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Greek and Hebrew Dictionaries by James Strong, copyrighted 1984 by Dugan Publishers.

Scripture taken from THE AMPLIFIED BIBLE [marked Amp.], Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified New Testament copyright © 1958, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Chapter 1

The Secret of Freedom

God’s Been Divorced, Too

The Paintball Game

I t can be paralyzing! Divorce can emotionally paralyze a person of conscience. People who don’t care much about matters of conscience sometimes merrily move on after divorce without experiencing a great deal of turbulence. Some even feel exhilarated and energized about their futures.

For people of conscience, however, divorce is a tragic disaster of colossal proportions. It can consume their entire lives until they come through it. It can feel like an invisible stain on their self-identity. It can send their physical body into shock, their soul into the deepest grief, and their spirit into a minute-by-minute directionless drift of self-doubt and insecurity.

For those who would have done anything and everything to hold the marriage together, divorce can cause them to question their very legitimacy to be alive. For the believer, it can present a total challenge to the reality of whether you are related to God. Do you really have a relationship with him at all? Did you ever?

Persons of conscience set their compass heading at the time of their marriage to cherish their mate for a lifetime. They committed their hearts to a fidelity extending even beyond this life, with a view into forever. For them, divorce causes a brokenness that few others can understand. For this reason, they can seldom discuss their anguish with others. If they do discuss it, only rarely do they confide about it on the deepest levels. They are like members of a secret society of brokenheartedness who are not connected to each other and who, for the most part, do not know that the other fellow members exist. But they are all around them.

One person in a divorce recovery class told a particularly vivid description of his feelings after divorce. He recounted,

It felt like I had unknowingly walked through a cruel paintball game and had been splattered with black ink that penetrated to my soul and spirit. It felt as if it would never go away. It seemed that if I walked into a room of people, all eyes could see the black stain of divorce that was over my life. Driving on the freeway, there was this illusion that all the other people in the cars I passed were normal, but that I was not. Maybe I never was normal. This illusion followed my car like a dark cloud…and only my car.

Compounding the unfairness regarding both the brokenheartedness and the feeling of the invisible stigma, society–and, unfortunately, the community of faith–has often joined in with the unsubstantiated disposition that there must be something wrong with the person who has been divorced. This is not necessarily a logical or scientific prejudice, just sometimes ingrained.

In an ironic injustice, someone who may not have had anything previously wrong prior to divorce may now, because of the divorce, have suffered real damage to his or her identity and personality–often, a lot of damage.

The premise of this chapter should, all by itself, resoundingly clarify the error in this prejudice. This is why knowing the fact that God has been divorced is more than important. It’s liberating.

God Has Been Divorced, Too

What a most profound thought! Did you know that God has been married and divorced? Have you ever heard this before? Probably not. Many people who know God well, including many who know the Scriptures in depth, have still never encountered this truth face-to-face in all its profoundness.

One day as I was reading the Scriptures, the following verse from the book of the prophet Jeremiah jumped out at me as if I were reading it for the very first time. And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce (Jeremiah 3:8).

Although I knew this Scripture, I had never looked at it in the way I was now seeing it. I had regarded it as an analogy, always presuming that it was just one of the wide array of literary devices utilized in the Scriptures. Now, however, I felt that God was inviting me to look closer at what the Scripture was actually saying. God is divorced? Even more so, God is a scriptural divorcée?

I was not ready to accept this. Really not ready. To reveal why I was not ready to accept this, I should share a very short paragraph.

I was raised to fear God. I had also intensely studied the Bible, and the awareness of God’s holiness had become indelibly imprinted on my spirit. His identity, to me, is sacred. Everything about God’s nature I believe to be perfect and fulfilled in what he intends himself to be. I regard even his name as holy, and never to be taken lightly. I believe that God is all-powerful, omnipresent, and omniscient. And yet, the Almighty God has chosen to be the merciful God, gracious and long-suffering in his covenants with his people. His spring rains fall on the fields of the unjust and the just alike. He has given us the breath of life that we breathe. He has given unto